In the past six months I've had four letters returned to me because they went through the sort/scanner upside down and used the sender address on the CN22 as the destination address. I'd put money on it being a failure of technology.

Try putting the CN22 on the back instead.

>My experience in the UK is that dysfunctional organizations try to hide issues by bullying their own customers.

I noticed this from Royal Mail. I reached out to them multiple times regarding a scam carried out using one of their tracked products from an eBay purchase and they said there was nothing they could do about it. But there was something they could do, and it was already going on completely silently in the background.

I later received a letter from Royal Mail stating that the delivery did in fact not take place, and with that I was able to claim a refund from eBay. However my interactions with Royal Mail were not reasonable:

1. They did not disclose that the matter would be looked into, instead they stated unequivocally that it would not and there was no way to escalate the matter. This meant that my plans were altered on account of assuming that the funds were lost.

2. They were unwilling to provide any official statement to eBay regarding the limited "tracking" available for their own product, and naturally eBay won't accept second-hand statements. If they were slightly flexible this would have resolved the dispute promptly - and I doubt I was the first person to fall victim to this scam, so some communication between eBay and Royal Mail would seem reasonable.

3. They gave no notice that they found in my favour and would be sending me a letter as evidence. I only received that mail by chance as I happened to book the same accomodation in a later visit, and this luckily coincided with that letter's arrival.

The unhelpfulness, stonewalling and opaque investigation seem entirely designed to cover for their own shortcomings. They would have had location data for the signed delivery, and they would have immediately had visibility that this didn't match my address.

It’s a scandal engine that occasionally delivers mail. No accountability, no repercussions.

>that occasionally delivers mail

Roughly once every two weeks, here.

Royal Mail and the Post Office are two separate organisations.

I am aware. It seems, regardless of institution, that no one at these levels of UK public good can take responsibility. It is as if the apathy has been institutionalized in a declining nation state. Where and how do find someone who cares and the authority to do something about it?

If you told me yet another UK institution had systemic issues (NHS?), I would not be surprised, and that is very sad. It should not be this hard to do better. Right? Or am I just an ignorant Yankee?

Royal mail has been a privately owned corporation for some years now.

Ignorant Yankee behind the times it is. Much shame. Appreciate being corrected.

Really putting the Royal in "Royal Mail" eh.

No, the mail service isn’t protecting paedophiles as far as I know.

Real question for any Brits here. What is the general consensus around the royals? I'd be pissed that my taxes were subsidizing their bullshit.

You can probably guess - older demographics lean towards supporting the monarchy, younger demographics skew towards not being fans. There's a loose consensus that the royal family is a net positive for the countries finances, but I believe that involves some creative accounting where all tourism to royal-adjacent properties and the surrounding areas is attributed entirely to those properties still being owned by a living monarch rather than the state, and also implicitly assumes that they are entitled to keep benefiting from the vast wealth and estates they have inherited from those who took them by force. There's no politically neutral answer to how much they cost, you'll get vastly different answers depending on where your lens is calibrated on the royalist-guillotine scale.

I’m only one voice but being in my mid-30s (so younger demographic I’d hope?) I don’t have a problem with the royals; I’m no royalist but nor do I seek their demise. I think most of my friends would fall into a similar category too.

> I believe that involves some creative accounting where all tourism to royal-adjacent properties and the surrounding areas is attributed entirely to those properties still being owned by a living monarch rather than the state

That argument is a tricky one (as you point out). The French palaces have a fair few visitors and there are no living royals to block access. The family don’t need to be in the castle.

It’s ludicrous as they are also my royal family - and I’m in New Zealand.

Well I (an American) agree with your sentiment, it appears that the British royalty don't actually rely on tax money, but instead they keep 25% of the money that the royaly estate /makes/ and the other 75% goes to the British treasury.

But I might be wrong. https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57559653

The Crown Estate is where the sovereign grant comes from, and it's weird. It's "owned" by the current monarch, but only in their role as head of state (the Crown). Realistically it belongs to the country and to the public, and were we to abolish monarchy, would not become the private property of the Windsor family.

So while they don't rely on tax money (outside of the huge amount of tax money spent on their police protection, transport in military aircraft, etc. etc.), they do rely on money which rightfully belongs to the people of the nation.

> were we to abolish monarchy, would not become the private property of the Windsor family.

Today, I expect that's what would happen. But I bet the Windsor family could have kept a lot if they had given up monarchy a while back. Which puts the "rightfully belongs to the people" claim in question, if you believe a king can ever legitimately own anything.

Also an American and I like the British (and also Japanese) royals. Benevolent monarchs are a cornerstone of serenity and sanity.

And yes, I realize the irony as an American. I think on average Americans like the British royal family more than Britons do?

> Benevolent monarchs…

The British royal family has veto power over parliament. They use this power to rewrite laws. Lots of this is well documented, but poorly publicised.

Pity they didn't stop Brexit, which would have been an actual good use of their veto power.

> Benevolent monarchs are a cornerstone of serenity and sanity.

So they are great until they aren’t, and then there is no mechanism to remove them.

Dictatorships are also good if you get a great leader.

> The view that the monarchy is ‘very important’ has reached the lowest percentage since data collection began in 1983.

https://natcen.ac.uk/news/public-support-monarchy-falls-reco...

I fall in the middle of the camps -- pretty sure we still get a good RoI on our marketing spend on the royals, unconvinced the family wouldn't actually be wealthier if they'd abandoned the throne and taken all their stuff with them instead of it "belonging to the country", feel rather sorry for those who get the most tabloid attention.

Anecdotally it's 50% "France had the right idea" and 50% "God save the king" with very few people in between.

Sibling comment confirms

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858847

My experience is the opposite. Most people don’t really care, but if pushed they’d be “well of course I don’t think the royal family should have a constitutional role, but I wouldn’t kill them, and I don’t trust politicians to put a better system in place…”

Step 1: Stop wasting money subsidising their bullshit.

Step 2: Take a slice of advice from the revolutionary French.

> Pissed that my taxes were subsidizing their bullshit

Accurate

More money goes to corrupt politicians than to the royals. It's less than 100M per year with 67M people.

I don't like supporting the royals but it's a small portion of taxes.

That equation misses the value of their assets and the revenue they make for themselves.

Or it could be a bug in the printing, there have been cases before where things were accidentally duplicated that shouldn't have been.

https://www.mycurrencycollection.com/blog/1-2013-new-york-du...